The mall, first floor.
The two of them gazed at it, and it stood in stark contrast to the mall they remembered from reality.
The bright, spacious, colorful, and clean mall was now a dim, gray, gloomy expanse.
The corridors and the outer walls of the shops looked clean and tidy, but bathed in this black-gray tone, they exuded an indescribable, eerie monotony.
'Whoosh…'
A slightly cold wind blew past, chilling and sinister, and the air was thick with the smell of dust and mildew.
In this moment, Haruno was one hundred percent certain that she had been dragged into a Strange event.
"Lin-kun, if I can successfully pass and return, can I become a player like you too?"
According to the incomplete information she had gathered, after passing a certain trial challenge, an ordinary person could generally become a player.
"No,"
Lin Ye's affirmative tone made Haruno's heart sink.
She had been harboring the thought that, since she'd already been dragged into a Strange event, becoming a formal Strange Player through it wouldn't be a bad choice.
But Lin Ye's answer thoroughly cast that thought into the cold palace of abandonment.
She'd already come to a Strange event, and yet she still wasn't qualified to become a Strange Player?
Then how on earth was one supposed to obtain the qualification of a Strange Player!?
"Based on the type of this Strange instance and my experience, you cannot obtain Strange Player qualification,"
"Mm."
She let out a soft hum.
"Even if you could, I'd advise you to give it up,"
"Why?"
"Every month, a Strange Player must go through at least one mandatory mission. Whether you can pass it depends entirely on your strength and luck,"
"Then I…"
But seeing Lin Ye shake his head, Haruno realized what he meant.
For that mandatory mission of hers, Lin Ye generally would have no way to participate.
She would have to face the Strange alone, accept the instance's challenge, and pass it through painstaking effort.
That possibility… existed, but it was very, very small.
Take the situation in the elevator just now—could she have thought of and solved it on her own?
Haruno recalled it, and couldn't be entirely certain.
After all, in the elevator she'd had Lin Ye to rely on; she had placed her hopes on him. If it had been Yukino, or someone else, or even just her alone—
Haruno felt that if she'd racked her brains, thought and acted calmly, she very likely could have found a solution and successfully escaped the elevator.
Of course,
all of these thoughts were now just hindsight.
Because she already knew how to successfully open the elevator doors, in an unknown situation she really couldn't be sure she would find the key point.
Haruno shook her head and pulled her thoughts back to the scene.
"Lin-kun, what do we do next…"
At this moment,
the sound of 'thump, thump, thump…' footsteps rose up.
It came from the right, from up in the stairwell.
Haruno tensed; Lin Ye watched calmly and stepped in front of her.
This subtle gesture made Haruno gaze up at Lin Ye's tall, straight back, filling her with a sense of security.
This guy—even though he constantly rejected her in daily life, had no interest in her at all, and refused her seductions countless times—
when real danger came, he would still shield her behind him, which put her even more at ease.
A few seconds later,
the footsteps came down the stairs,
appearing on the first floor,
and a figure emerged.
The figure even staggered a couple of steps.
He was running fast, panicked and flustered, his rapid breathing clearly audible.
"Eh, people."
Only then did the figure notice that two figures had appeared in the path ahead of him.
His first instinct was that they were monsters, but their clear, normal appearance made him think it was more likely they were human.
"Hey, hey, you—are you people or are you Ghosts!"
The man ran fast, but also controlled his direction, terrified that Lin Ye and the other might be monsters so he could flee in time.
"Are you a person or a Ghost?"
Haruno asked first.
The other party looked rather disheveled, but judging by his current behavior and manner, he was probably human and didn't seem like a monster.
But this was only Haruno's judgment; she trusted Lin Ye, the professional, to better discern the other's true form.
"A person, a person! You guys… huff, huff, huff…"
Both sides remained on guard.
"What's chasing you from behind?"
As the words fell, the man immediately whipped his head around to look behind him, only to find that the monster that had been chasing him was already gone.
"Huff, huff, huff… a, a monster, a naked-bodied monster, it scared me to death,"
Naked-bodied?
Are you sure it wasn't a pervert, but a monster?
"It, it really was a monster,"
The man braced both hands on his knees, gasping in huge gulps,
"A naked monster. At first I… even thought I'd run into a pervert, but it turned out, it turned out…"
That scene—just thinking about it filled him with lingering fear.
Murakami Mamoru still had a lingering fear in his heart, his face still tinged with pallor.
He'd gone to work today as a waiter at a high-end restaurant in the shops, working his normal shift, but he never imagined that in the blink of an eye he would arrive at this mysterious, dangerous place.
The dim, deserted mall filled his heart with fear, but in the end he summoned up his courage and began to walk out, searching for any possible people.
After all, staying in place would change nothing; only by going out, only by being outside, could he find a path to survival.
A single person, dead silence all around, only the sound of his own footsteps.
He was afraid.
He instinctively craved other people.
In the end, he discovered a figure.
Filled with hope, he shouted from far away and quickly approached, only for the figure to suddenly turn around, peel off the trench coat it had been wearing, and charge straight at him in a wild rush.
That scene left Murakami Mamoru utterly dumbfounded, and he turned and ran for his life.
The sinister grin on that naked monster's face—he could hardly forget it; it remained vivid in his memory even now.
"Huff, huff, huff…"
Murakami Mamoru finished recounting his experience since arriving at this Strange mall.
A naked monster, with a sinister-colored face, its body the skin color of a human body, but its body parts unlike a human's—prominently Strange.
Haruno turned her questioning gaze toward Lin Ye, "Lin-kun, there's no chance he misread it, right!"
"Impossible. I, Murakami Mamoru, have had good eyesight for all these many years. There's absolutely no way I misread it."
"Then why did the monster that was chasing you suddenly stop coming?"
"This… this… how would I know!"
The middle-aged man shook his head vigorously, indicating that he didn't know either.
To him, it was something completely incomprehensible.
He didn't even know how he'd come here, let alone why the monster had stopped chasing.
"Could it be because of you two being here!"
He looked at the two of them, "Because the two of you exist, it gave up chasing me—it was scared off by you,"
Hearing this, Haruno immediately looked toward Lin Ye.
If anyone could scare a Strange entity, it would be Lin Ye.
So amazing!
To be able to even scare off the Strange—Haruno's eyes brimmed with an excited expression.
To Haruno, Lin Ye was growing ever more powerful.
At first, her impression of Lin Ye's strength had only gone as far as him being stronger than humans, but if he could reach the level where even the Strange feared him, then that strength was absolutely unimaginable.
But Lin Ye did not think so.
Up until now, there had been Strange entities that fled at the sight of him, but those were all built on a certain prior recognition of him. This time, he hadn't even seen that Strange entity, so how could it be fear?
It must have brushed against some rule, or else the Strange had chased this man until reaching a set time limit, and so retreated and left.
"Did you run into a dog?"
"Eh!"
Haruno was startled—wasn't it a cat?
"A dog? No, no, no, not a dog. I didn't run into a dog. I did run into a cat, though—but I only heard a cat's meow, that's all,"
As the words fell,
Haruno understood what Lin Ye meant.
A verbal trap.
Generally speaking, if someone had truly encountered a cat, when asked whether they'd run into a dog, they would usually still mention the cat. Even if the man hadn't mentioned the cat, Lin Ye could have continued to question him.
Now, it could basically be confirmed that their arrival here was connected to that cat.
"Lin-kun,"
"Mm. The cat may be the key to our successfully leaving this place,"
"Uh, eh, eh, eh,"
The man, Murakami Mamoru, reacted after a while.
So this man and woman had also come here because of a cat—not because of any dog at all.
He'd been baited into talking!
Displeased, extremely displeased.
Wasn't this a sign that they didn't trust him?
But thinking carefully about the current situation, Murakami Mamoru didn't dwell on this issue any further.
Staying alive was what mattered.
One look told him this man was very strong.
At worst, with three people, if a monster came, the chance of it chasing him was only one in three; he had every possibility of successfully escaping.
Two minutes later,
Murakami Mamoru stood up, "Hey buddy, where do we go next?"
Facing the gray expanse of the mall, all he had in his heart was panic, but compared to before when he'd been alone, he was much better now.
People, in a dangerous environment, still long for their own kind.
"When you came running over, did you encounter anything strange, or any other things?"
Murakami Mamoru shook his head, "No, no. The only strange thing was that naked monster—it scared me to death."
He didn't even want to recall it now; that scene was unnerving.
"Let's go. We'll look around."
Murakami Mamoru couldn't decide whether to go or stay, but in the end he still followed behind the two of them.
Seeing this beautiful woman with shoulder-length black hair tugging at Lin Ye's sleeve, he instantly understood the relationship between the two.
This man would definitely protect this woman.
Which meant he himself was in a bit more danger, wasn't he?
He began to calculate in his heart.
The three of them walked through the mall's first floor.
All along the way, it was a dim expanse; the entire floor seemed to have lost its color, leaving only the three shades of black, white, and gray. But under this color tone, Lin Ye and the others were beginning to be able to see the first floor's situation clearly.
'Tap…'
'Tap…'
The three had lightened their steps as much as possible, but in this silent mall, their footsteps were still unusually crisp and clear.
Following behind Lin Ye, Haruno looked left and right, both vigilant and as if seeking something, hoping to discover something so she could make whatever contribution she could.
Suddenly,
Lin Ye stopped in his tracks.
Haruno failed to react in time and bumped into Lin Ye, but she didn't make a sound and quickly steadied herself, an alarm blaring in her heart.
Something special must have happened.
Was a monster coming?
'Gulp…'
Haruno swallowed, her heartbeat involuntarily quickening.
She carefully turned to look, and her eyes instantly contracted.
It wasn't a monster, but a shop bathed in an orange-yellow glow.
Against the dim backdrop, that shop was especially conspicuous.
Something was wrong—definitely something wrong.
Moreover,
this orange-yellow glow was far too obvious. Why hadn't they seen it before? With this color and brightness, they should have seen it from far away, but they simply hadn't—they only saw it once they reached here.
Haruno offered her thoughts, "Lin-kun, something's wrong. It's like it's luring us to approach,"
"Right, right, right, right,"
Murakami Mamoru nodded vigorously in agreement, "That light is way too strange. How could a human use a light with that kind of look? It should be a bright white glow to match human needs."
Neither of them advised approaching—it was obviously a trap. In a place like this, staying away was the correct answer.
But Lin Ye, right in front of the two of them, walked straight toward that shop suffused with orange-yellow glow.
Haruno was stunned; her steps lagged for a beat before she followed.
From the very start, it had already been decided—only by keeping close to Lin Ye's pace could she survive.
Murakami Mamoru's pressure surged, but he still followed along, "In any case, I'm not going in. At most I'll wait outside the door."
He'd made up his mind not to enter.
Lin Ye arrived in front of the shop.
It was a jewelry store.
Through the display window, Lin Ye could see neatly arranged jewelry, necklaces, and accessories—gold necklaces, white pearls, and diamonds reflecting their luster.
Lin Ye didn't go in right away; he merely gazed and observed.
"Let's go!"
Seeing that Lin Ye didn't walk in, Haruno also breathed a sigh of relief.
Murakami Mamoru muttered softly in his heart, expressing his own inner thoughts.
He'd assumed Lin Ye would head straight in, but unexpectedly he still didn't enter. He didn't know whether to be glad or sad.
'Drip…'
'Drip…'
It was the sound of dripping water,
exceptionally loud.
Each drop tugged at the heart.
Haruno had already determined the direction the sound came from; the rest was up to Lin Ye.
Lin Ye raised his hand to signal Haruno not to worry—she just had to follow behind him.
Rounding the corner,
Lin Ye cast his gaze over,
and soon, a figure appeared, sitting and leaning against the wall beneath the staircase.
Haruno spotted it too.
Was this a person?
The figure did look like a person, but it gave more the impression of a Ghost.
"You two stay here, I'll go take a look,"
"Okay, okay, okay, okay, buddy, go ahead with no worries. We'll wait here for you to come back."
Murakami Mamoru couldn't wait for Lin Ye to keep making contact with those mysterious, dangerous monsters.
In any case, by his feeling, that was absolutely a monster.
Murakami Mamoru had already begun planning his escape. The moment the monster attacked, he would immediately turn his head and run; the route was already all arranged.
"Be careful,"
Haruno reminded.
Unlike Murakami Mamoru's thoughts, she simply wanted to follow Lin Ye's arrangement. If Lin Ye felt he needed her to go along, he wouldn't have told her to stay here.
Lin Ye nodded toward Haruno, then walked step by step toward the figure in the stairwell.
Soon, he frowned slightly. A faint sour, foul smell filled the air, and it was growing thicker.
This could basically be confirmed to be the smell emanating from that figure.
...
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